


Wysocki

by somegunemojis



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, Nazis are bad as always, WWII era, World War II, step one is to fall in love with a polish doctor, step three is supposed to be profit but ig you never know, step two is to fuck off because youre a gay leftist catholic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23517202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: He falls in love with Konrad Wysocki in Berlin, the summer of 1921. The man is studying to be a doctor, of all things.Times are hard, but then they get worse.
Relationships: Prussia (Hetalia)/OC
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Wysocki

**Author's Note:**

> 2 things:  
> 1\. Pure cannot use the name Gilbert Bielschmidt  
> 2\. Rainer Gersten throws himself at life, part [censored]

ZAMOŚĆ – 1942.

They hide under a bridge only 5 kilometers from the city, listening to the trucks full of soldiers roll over in the night, trying to count their numbers. Reports say there have been arrests, disappearances. They say those that fight will be there one day and gone the next, that it’s better to pack and go while you still have your lives. They say staying is foolhardy. Rainer supposes this probably makes them fools, though it’s hardly the first time he’s been considered so. 

Konrad keeps a tally in a book, calculations of numbers and supplies, and he tends to the injuries of any of those scared enough to make their way out to them. Rainer sits cross legged with his back to one of the support columns, rifle balanced on his knees, and lets the vibrations from the heavy machines shake him to the core. He listens for the footfalls of strangers, watches for movement in the trees, and his mind drifts enough to cold dark and shapeless things that his companion begins to give him strange looks, stepping close enough to him to lay a hand on his shoulder, or on his cheek, close enough to whisper a plea to come back to him. He always does. They carry on. 

In the hot summer nights they creep into the city to listen to conversations, steal weapons, steal food. Things that are useful are spirited away – information in one direction, weapons in another, food to non-combatants and the sick and injured. Violence erupts. They lay in wait on the sides of roads, they lay their traps, they kill their enemies. They bury their dead. 

He catches Konrad spending a long time staring at his scrubbed-raw hands, eyes far away, bending and flexing each joint. Rainer takes his hands in his and kisses each knuckle, gives him something to do. Write down positions. We should look for the others and see if they need any of their wounded tended. We should go, go, go. 

At night, they fold their fingers together tightly at their sides. It’s too hot for much else. Rainer sleeps sitting up, a rifle propped in easy reach on a wall, a tree, his own shoulder. Konrad sleeps with a cheek pressed to his hip, knees to his chest, their tangled hands pulled into the crook of his neck. Rainer likes that he can feel tiny puffs of damp breath on his skin in the night. 

Rainer prays. Oh god, does he pray.

He prays for guidance, for protection, for deliverance and for victory. He prays for food and mild weather and enough bullets and the will to carry on. He prays for himself, he prays for Konrad, he prays for the allies and he prays for The Enemy. Rainer clutches the crucifix that hangs around his neck until the imprint is angry and red on his hands, until his fingers begin to shake, and he prays that Konrad survives, he prays that the family they saw off into the night will see the morning, and he prays that his home will still be there at the end of it all, the little house at the end of the road surrounded by a garden that is forever completely out of his control. He prays until Konrad places his forehead to the nape of his neck and drags him from his knees in the dark, stands close to him while his legs wobble coltishly as the blood returns to them, whispers that they will be alright, that they will survive, tells him at the end of it all they will escape to Warzsawa, to Lublin, to New York goddamn City, murmurs sweet nothings against his chin and his mouth until his hands cease their tremors, until his eyes focus, until his mind quiets.

They go on. The days become shorter and the nights drag on, grow colder. Rainer wakes one morning and they are sharing blankets, his chin is tucked to Konrad's shoulder and his hand is over his heart, and he is convinced for a moment that they are back in Berlin, that it is 1921 and things are shit but they’re better for having each other to lean on, an aspiring doctor and a budding socialist organizer. The early sun shines through their boarded up window over Konrad's cheek, lights up his eyelashes, the strands of his hair wild on their thin, makeshift mattress. A wet cough from the bedding a few feet behind him brings him back to the moment, but he still files the moment away: the warmth under his palm, the peace in Konrad’s slacked jaw, the ragged beard growing in after a few days without a shave, the crow’s feet deepening in the corners of his eyes. He folds the scene and the feeling of peace up and places it carefully in the back of his mind, and then he gets up to start his day, letting Konrad sleep just a little longer. 

The winter comes back as it always does, and the fighting explodes in technicolor around them. Rainer's skin grows cold to the touch, and he doesn’t speak unless spoken to directly, he hands out his cigarette rations, sticks close to Konrad’s side like a watchful wraith, like a guardian angel. When the gunfire dies down they converge, check each other over, and then begin to assess the damage to their comrades. Konrad stitches up those that can fight, saves the ones he can, and helps dig the graves of those he can’t. They are hungry. They are cold. They survive. 

The day after Christmas finds them sipping lukewarm, watery broth around a kicked-down fire in the dark, passing a flask of some kind of bottom-of-the-barrel concoction posing as wine between themselves, trying to get drunk enough to forget the Lord’s Prayer in all of their collected languages. Rainer leans on his shoulder and mutters, “I wish things were different,” and he means a million things by it. For the first time in the entirety of his life, he wishes there was no war. He wishes he could know Konrad the Doctor as a man that never had to bloody his healing hands, that they would grow old and die together, wants to kiss him goodnight one night when all of the strength has faded from their bones and never wake up, he wishes he could yell to the world how special this man is, how much he adores him, how gentle and kind and full of warmth he is, and he wishes they could raise seven darling little children that are far too loud and love to laugh. He whispers all of these things to him in the dark like they are at confession, as if he were a spring and the things that he wants for both of them, for himself, well out of him with no end. Konrad strokes his face through it all and finally silences him with a tender kiss, the softest smile ever seen, and a firm but gentle, “We will live to see the day.” 

The day of New Year’s Eve, someone snaps a photograph of the pair of them. There is a woolen blanket around their shoulders, and they are pressed together hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. Konrad's arm is thrown over his shoulders, and Rainer's hand rests somewhere a bit higher than the knee, something hardly appropriate that passes without comment from anyone, and their heads are bowed as they bullshit about the ultimate root vegetable; beets or potatoes. Their rifles are propped against their shoulders, Konrad's brows are drawn in a stern line, and Rainer’s teeth are bared and his eyes are squeezed shut as he laughs. The photograph is tucked into a bible, and carried in his breast pocket for the rest of the war.

Second of January, 1943, the night is frigid. Clouds of breath hang in the air like tiny galaxies before falling to the earth. Rainer thinks he can’t quite recall the last time he could feel his toes, and when he complains about it as they huddle under their blankets, Konrad laughs and dryly responds, “Probably no sooner than November.” They fall asleep without much fuss, too exhausted and hungry and cold to want to stay awake any longer than they have to. Rainer's face pressed to Konrad's shoulder, his hand to his heart. 

Rainer wakes in the morning, frost crusted on his eyelashes, and Konrad does not. There is a howling inside of him when the chest before him fails to rise, something shattered and bleeding and empty, crawling up his lungs and his throat and threatening to spill acid from his mouth. His hands shake with the desire to throttle the world, burn it all to the ground. He wants to scream, he wants to cry, he wants to wail and he wants to shred something limb from limb like a feral animal. 

He doesn’t do any of these things – not yet. Silently, he sits up. They were too far from the fires; he can see the stillness of the bodies around the outskirts of the camp. His eyes itch, painfully dry after too many long nights and too much cold, and he can’t even manage a sob. He reaches out to trace Konrad’s face, ice cold to the touch and rigid, and then he stands, and he begins to dig his lover’s shallow grave, the gifted silver crucifix hanging heavily from his neck.


End file.
